Book Title: THE KILLER WEDDING
Character Name: Henry Vaughn (best man, narrator, the only one paying attention)
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
Mercifully uneventful, which I have come to appreciate more as an adult than I did at the time. My parents are sensible people in Surrey who worry about hedges and the church roof fund. I have a younger sister who works in logistics and finds my friendship with James a source of endless, justified amusement. Nobody in my family has ever hired a private investigator to look into anyone’s fiancée, which, I have learned this year, is not something every family can say.
What was your greatest talent?
Noticing things. The handshake that’s a fraction too firm. The smile that never quite reaches the eyes. The brother who appears from nowhere three weeks after an engagement and orders the wine before anyone’s asked him to. It’s not a talent anyone pays you for directly, though I would argue it has, on at least four occasions this year, kept my best friend alive.
Significant other?
Not currently, no. I went on three dates with a woman from the floor below mine in March, and on the third I found myself analyzing her drinks order for tells. She noticed. It did not go well. I have decided this is less a character flaw and more an occupational hazard and I am sticking to that story.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I was trained, informally and over many years, to treat warmth as a thing that might be concealing something. This is extremely useful when a stranger claiming to be your friend’s new brother-in-law turns up wanting to discuss Burgundy. It is considerably less useful on a second date.
Where do you live?
A flat in Pimlico that is, by James’s standards, a garden shed and by everyone else’s standards, perfectly nice. No hot tub. No lake. No stone lions in feather boas. I have never been happier about any of those omissions than I was the morning after the wedding.
Do you have any enemies?
That depends rather a lot on whether you count a man who tried to have my best friend killed four separate times over the course of a single weekend and whether you count him as an enemy or simply an extremely persistent inconvenience. I’ll leave that one to the reader.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by?
Hartington Hall has a library I would happily never leave; all dark wood and the particular hush of a house that has been quietly judging its visitors for two hundred years. I am, on the other hand, never getting in that hot tub again, under any circumstances, regardless of who insists it has been thoroughly cleaned.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Neither. Or if you count James in most of the ways that matter, both: small, innocent, occasionally frustrating child and tail wagging labrador. This is more than enough for me, a man can only manage so much.
What do you do for a living?
I have, when pressed, described my role as “administrative liaison in cross-departmental risk assessment” at Whitehall, which is technically true and has the additional virtue of ending the conversation immediately. I share an open-plan office with eleven colleagues and a microwave bearing a passive-aggressive note about fish that has been there since 2019. It is not, by anybody’s measure, a glamorous existence. But it did, as it turned out, prepare me rather well for the events of one particular wedding weekend.
Greatest disappointment?
That Viktor’s taste in wine was, by any objective measure, excellent. I would have preferred him to have terrible taste in something so close to my heart. It would have made the whole business considerably easier to process.
Greatest source of joy?
James, infuriatingly. Eight years of watching him walk towards danger with the trusting enthusiasm of a man who has never once considered that the world might not love him back. Somehow, he is still here, still happy and I am still, against my better judgement, glad of it.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I read. I drink modest amounts of decent wine. I attend other people’s weddings and quietly note the exits. I have been told that is not what most people do for fun, but which has proven, in my case, to be a sensible use of an afternoon.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I find it almost impossible to simply enjoy an occasion. Somewhere around the second course I am cataloguing who arrived late, who is watching the door, and whether the best man’s speech can double as a coded warning if it comes to that. Once, just once, I would like to attend a family event and think about nothing more sinister than the seating plan.
What keeps you awake at night?
The lake, mostly. Not because of what’s in it. Because of what might still be swimming.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
James has started using the word “christening” in sentences with a worrying degree of confidence, and Granny has begun asking very specific questions about perimeter security for a house that does not, as far as I am aware, currently require any. I suspect I am about to learn that the wedding was merely the opening chapter.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
A holiday, a real one where I can actually relax. One that does not require me to identify a threat, defuse a family argument, or explain to a vicar why there’s a sword involved. James right now has more than any reasonable person could hope for on all accounts. So for him, it is more simple, to hang onto that.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
James, mostly, Viktor of course and possibly Granny, who knows considerably more than she lets on and has never once seen fit to mention it before things get interesting. I have made my peace with the fact that quiet weekends even are simply not part of the deal when your best friend is this likeable and this catastrophically unaware of how dangerous his own life has become. Someone has to notice things. It has, apparently, always got to be me.
THE KILLER WEDDING by Sophie Tuke
A Hilarious Cosy British Wedding Rom Com
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed… Something Lethal.
Discover the sharpest, most unapologetically British spy comedy of the year. Think Wodehouse meets le Carré, served with vintage champagne and a side of attempted murder.
Henry Vaughn has a job title designed to make people change the subject: ‘administrative liaison in cross-departmental risk assessment’ at Whitehall. He shares an office with eleven colleagues and a microwave featuring a passive-aggressive note about fish. But Henry’s real, unglamorous vocation is keeping his best friend, James Ashworth-Pemberton, alive.
James is the “golden retriever” of the English aristocracy: wealthy, generous, and catastrophically trusting. He is a man who “drives in ski boots,” “once spent four hours helping a lost tourist,” and is fundamentally incapable of recognizing a death threat. So, when James proposes to Anastasia Kovalenko; a brilliant tech entrepreneur with watchful eyes and a backstory full of gaps, Henry starts watching.
He is right to watch. But he is wrong about what he is watching for.
Anastasia isn’t a gold-digger. She is a former Ukrainian intelligence operative, recruited at sixteen, who walked away from her past during the chaos of war to build a legitimate life in London. But that past has followed her to the Cotswolds in the shape of Viktor Morozov: her “ex-handler” posing as her long-lost brother, who intends to murder the groom during the wedding weekend to seize the family fortune.
What follows at Hartington Hall; a honey-coloured Georgian pile where the bunting droops like the moustache of a defeated general, is a catastrophic wedding day where James’s life is saved repeatedly by sheer, ridiculous accident:
- A dangerously steaming hot tub full of stolen lobsters and chunks of ice.
- A poisoning blocked by a high-society row over ketchup snobbery.
- An assassination drone strike disintegrated by a “surprise” fireworks display.
- A lethal cake-cutting parried by an antique ceremonial sword used since the Napoleonic Wars.
The groom never realizes he was in danger. The bride is super smart and came to her own wedding with a stiletto knife strapped to her blue silk garter.
Narrated by Henry; dry, self-deprecating and devastatingly funny: THE KILLER WEDDING is a high-energy crossover between comic fiction, cosy mystery and spy thriller. It is the perfect read for fans of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, Mick Herron’s Slow Horses and the high-society satire of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
Why readers are loving The Killer Wedding:
- The Voice: Henry Vaughn is the narrator you’ll want chronicling everything from your morning commute to your own wedding.
- The Setting: A crumbling Cotswolds estate where the secrets are as vintage as the champagne.
- The Ensemble Cast: From Elizabeth, the formidable mother with a hidden prenup, to Granny Cordelia, who asks about security perimeters while sipping samogon from old friends in Moscow.
- The Chaos: A squad of useless ushers, a flamboyant wedding planner with seventeen shades of white and a DJ who worked Glastonbury until dawn.
- The Action: From booby-trapped hot air balloons to elite cyber-warfare, the stakes never let up.
“A British Spy Comedy at its finest.”
Grab your copy today and join the most eventful wedding of the season!
Humor | Thriller [ Independently Published, On Sale: March 6, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798250994651 / ]
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About Sophie Tuke
Sophie Tuke lives in the Cotswolds, where she spends her time walking her dogs acrossfields that don’t belong to her and cultivating a fountain pen collection that has longsince crossed the line into a clinical condition. She writes exclusively inturquoise ink—mostly because it’s pretty—and maintains a strictly non-negotiable “cream-first” policyregarding scones.A veteran of more country house weddings than is medically advisable, Sophie drawsinspiration from the rigid manners and absolute chaos of the English upper classes. Herdebut novel,The Killer Wedding, was born from a desire to blend the wit of P.G.Wodehouse with the heart of Richard Curtis and the stakes of a high-octane thriller. Shefamously writes her first drafts in longhand, transcribing them “reluctantly” onto alaptop only when necessary.When she isn’t documenting the “bumbling” heroism of her characters, Sophie can befound skiing, boating in the South of France, or wandering the countryside in wellies.She is currently working on asequel—written in turquoise ink, naturally—where her dry-witted narrator, Henry Vaughn, must navigate the perils of a christening. She remains afirm believer that the best villains are eventually defeated by lobsters.
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